Different ways of writing
The Ragged Optimist 105
This week, The Ragged Optimist has joined The Writer’s Space, as part of Words Change Things festival*, and is writing this message to you in a room full of other writers. It’s an interesting experience, with a natural hush and calm but also a sense of real activity - whether pen on paper, keyboard, or tapping a touchscreen. Whatever it takes to make the words come. Don’t some people type furiously?
The Ragged Optimist first called himself a writer when he had a weekly column in the Worthing Herald, 350-500 words, hand-typed, on the editor’s desk every Wednesday morning. A good writing discipline. Get the words down, hand it over.
The whole Words Change Things weekend is a wonderful celebration of different ways of working to get to a better world. Some of that looks like activism as you’d expect it to look, but some is just this - creating different spaces where things can happen, places that let people be in different ways, moments that blur the lines and let people find what they have in common.
*You’ve missed it. We did tell you about it, didn’t we?
“Relearn the art of invitation, make friends with somebody you disagree with, tend a patch of ground; try praying, even if you can’t quite say who to; learn a song, listen to a child, share a meal with your neighbours and set an extra place for the stranger who might arrive at your table. Be free with your joy, be true to your grief and be careful where you put your anger. Carry words like seeds and scatter them where you go.” From Dougald Hine’s essay for Words Change Things.
The first Transitioning Away from Fossil Fuels conference, in Santa Marta, has been a change of mood. “After years stuck in endless debates about whether to phase out fossil fuels, finally we are focusing on the how. We are no longer fighting for recognition of the problem, but creating solutions. It’s like watching a dam break – all that pent-up experience, knowledge and passion suddenly flowing into concrete ways to phase out dirty fuels. The hope is contagious.”
Candee are launching several products to replace single-use plastic – biodegradable coat hangers, extruded sheets for printing, moulding and forming and a 3D printable material. Over the summer they’re opening 103 Kings Cross Road in London, to showcase their work but also to provide workspace for other similar environment-saving businesses.
EnviroCentre in Ottawa helps organizations take climate action that works in the real world. To encourage more people to use public transport they asked - what would happen if waiting for a bus felt different? If a station felt less transactional and more human? So they launched Tunes & Tracks, a live music pilot at three transit stations across Ottawa. Local musicians performed during peak hours, transforming a familiar space into something momentarily shared.
They’re also solving the urgent need to make Canadian homes fit to combat the climate crisis when there’s a shortage of skilled workers.
Leicestershire County Council want our favourite semi-aquatic rodents to help prevent flooding. (And - somebody asked The Ragged Optimist this week why there’s a beaver in every edition. Well, why wouldn’t there be?)
The Iberian Highlands will showcase its status as a destination for nature tourism in a conference at the Dehesa de Corduente Visitor Centre, one of the most iconic areas of the Alto Tajo Natural Park. It’s more evidence that Spanish tourism is changing towards nature, wildlife and forests.
At a former sheep farm turned rewilding project in the Yorkshire Dales, the team has been growing native mosses that will help restore and protect their damaged peatlands.
Theaster Gates has transformed a shop in Milan into an earthen sanctuary for his exhibition Chawan Cabinet, dedicated to Japanese pottery. The exhibition brings together hundreds of vessels and objects sculpted by Gates along with a selection he has curated from friends and mentors in Japan. The Ragged Optimist owns one hundred teapots, mostly made by British studio potters. Expect asn exhibition soon.
And to end this week’s newsletter, something everyday. This is a lovely article, about why local politics matters. Five stories from a local council ward.
Enjoyed that! Was briefly confused by the Collection notice (see below)